by Kasey Arena, Powercakes
Hi all! My name is Kasey Arena & I am a Certified Personal Trainer, Strength & Conditioning Coach, & lover of all things fitness, food, & Vega related.
I like to refer to food as BODYfuel. Sounds a lot like the word beautiful, doesn’t it? I love that, because fueling your body is beautiful. As much as I embrace this now, it wasn’t always the case for me.
About 13 years ago I developed an eating disorder, piggy-backing off of an anxiety disorder from whenever I was 11 years old, that totally changed my life. Looking back now, I truly believe that through the struggle, I found strength.
I found strength to help others that may be going through a similar problem, or are just looking to find more love within their own bodies through food & fitness. I used to look at food as something I should restrict & I looked at fitness as something I should over-do, all for wanting to look a certain way.
I used to fear fats, carbs, and only eat certain types of protein. With being in the fitness industry, I often have clients cutting out categories of macronutrients as a way to look better, yet they find themselves feeling worse.
Macronutrients are simply carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, or the three primary sources that make up our daily food intake. Our bodies thrive with a balance of all three that works for us, but, too often, people cut out a whole macronutrient group & I can relate to this first hand from past experiences.
Now, excuse me as I put on my Health & Physical Education Teacher hat. Did I mention I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Health & PE? Educating has always been my passion as well as learning.
One of my favorite lessons to teach my kids is all about being a car...and you can choose whichever car you’d like to be. Vroom Vroom! Now how does a car go? What does it need? FUEL. One of my favorite forms of fuel? Vega Sport Performance Protein Powder which I often use in my daily smoothies after training.
As for the car, what happens if it doesn’t have enough fuel? It doesn’t make it too far, does it? It’s as simple as that. Isn’t it amazing how sometimes that simple concept can be taken to an extreme? I believe in going back to the basics to rediscover how you body truly thrives. By that, I mean going back to the basics of fueling the car that is your body to make it run efficiently, go further, and carry your valuable things inside of it from place to place.
My goal with all this car talk is to help you know that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to eating. I’ve been able to help myself & others by just embracing my motto of “be true to you” and doing what’s best for your own body.
In order for our bodies to function, be active, train, work, run, walk, blink, think, or breathe – we need to fuel in order for all of these things to perform better. Often times, we are in need of more fuel than we think we are & if we truly want to produce better results in our athletics, fueling is one of the main things we all need to look at.
In the past, my workouts & goals were suffering from my inability to truly fuel my better. I challenged myself to listen to my body, give it what it needs, & not let myself refer back to my eating disordered past. My inner-athlete wouldn’t let me back down from this challenge & ever since I started to give my body what it wants, my workouts have never been better.
It’s amazing what just fueling your body can do for your performance!
I constantly am inspired to try new things...this year I competed in my first team obstacle course, The Civilian Military Combine, Ran my first Half Marathon in honor of my friend Kyle, Led a “Be True To You” workshop at my old High School to help spread the message to High School girl’s about positive body image & embracing food as fuel, and am currently working towards hosting a Retreat in August with two other bloggers called The GLOW Retreat which Vega is sponsoring.
Another way Vega has helped, not only fuel my body, but also fuel others is a few months ago, we teamed up to help out my alma mater Slippery Rock University’s Triathlon Team “fuel their better” as myself & Vega supported their 3 months of training leading up to their first races.
I look forward to the future because with each passing day brings new possibilities and moments to work on my own better. Whether it’s with coaching, training, blogging, or living – I promise myself to continue to fuel this body that I was given & hopefully inspire others to do the same.
